Kim eBook

He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room,
rapt from all other thoughts; hands folded in lap,
and pupils contracted to pin-points. In a minute
— in another half-second — he felt he would
arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but
here, as always happens, his mind dropped away from
those heights with a rush of a wounded bird, and passing
his hand before his eyes, he shook his head.

A long-haired Hindu bairagi [holy man], who had just
bought a ticket, halted before him at that moment
and stared intently.

‘I also have lost it,’ he said sadly.
’It is one of the Gates to the Way, but for
me it has been shut many years.’

‘What is the talk?’ said Kim, abashed.

’Thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what
manner of thing thy soul might be. The seizure
came of a sudden. I know. Who should know
but I? Whither goest thou?’

‘Toward Kashi [Benares].’

’There are no Gods there. I have proved
them. I go to Prayag [Allahabad] for the fifth
time — seeking the Road to Enlightenment.
Of what faith art thou?’

‘I too am a Seeker,’ said Kim, using one
of the lama’s pet words. ’Though’-
he forgot his Northern dress for the moment —
’though Allah alone knoweth what I seek.’

The old fellow slipped the bairagi’s crutch
under his armpit and sat down on a patch of ruddy
leopard’s skin as Kim rose at the call for the
Benares train.

‘Go in hope, little brother,’ he said.
’It is a long road to the feet of the One;
but thither do we all travel.’

Kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he
had sat out twenty miles in the crowded compartment,
was cheering his neighbours with a string of most
wonderful yarns about his own and his master’s
magical gifts.

Benares struck him as a peculiarly filthy city, though
it was pleasant to find how his cloth was respected.
At least one-third of the population prays eternally
to some group or other of the many million deities,
and so reveres every sort of holy man. Kim was
guided to the Temple of the Tirthankars, about a mile
outside the city, near Sarnath, by a chance-met Punjabi
farmer — a Kamboh from Jullundur-way who had
appealed in vain to every God of his homestead to
cure his small son, and was trying Benares as a last
resort.

‘Thou art from the North?’ he asked,
shouldering through the press of the narrow, stinking
streets much like his own pet bull at home.

’Ay, I know the Punjab. My mother was
a pahareen, but my father came from Amritzar —
by Jandiala,’ said Kim, oiling his ready tongue
for the needs of the Road.

’Jandiala — Jullundur? Oho!
Then we be neighbours in some sort, as it were.’
He nodded tenderly to the wailing child in his arms.
’Whom dost thou serve?’